Advice from an amateur sommelier about pairings with home-made meals

Pizza … Paired with a Spanish Jumilla

Food: Homemade pizza is a staple in our household … we have it almost every Saturday night. So you will see pizza on this blog a few times a year, but the pizza will have different toppings, sometimes made with different crusts, and paired with a variety of wines. The crust for this particular pizza (and the one we use most frequently) is from Peter Reinhart’s wonderful cookbook American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza. It is his recipe for Napoletana Pizza Dough made with no oil or sugar, only all-purpose flour, salt, yeast, and cool water. My wife makes one recipe’s worth of dough, enough for six personal size pizza (about 8 to 10 inches each), rolls up 6 balls of the dough, two for that night’s dinner and freezes the four remaining balls for use on the following two Saturdays. The topping is just a simple tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, Italian herbs, pepperoni, and green peppers. I like a generous shake of red pepper flakes with mine. Close your eyes … you’re in Naples!

Wine: So … I know what you’re thinking … pair this pizza with a nice Italian red wine. Barbara, Chianti Classico, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo … all great choices. But let’s get a little adventuresome. We’ll leave Italy and and seek out something promising in nearby Spain. The “Clio” is a big, powerful wine made from 70% Monastrell (Mourvèdre) grapes and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon grown in the Jumilla wine region, a small region on the Mediterranean coast of southeastern Spain.

Tasting Notes: A deep, almost black, cherry red in color. A word that comes to mind in describing its look is “brooding”. The aromas don’t disappoint … bold black cherry, leather and earth. The flavors carry that same theme of earthiness, leather and jam, with a touch of cedar and expresso. Though clearly a bold-flavored wine, it has a surprising element of lightness to it. Really works well with the tomato, pepperoni and green pepper of the pizza. Wow!

Other Food That Pairs Well with This “Clio”: Pasta with Meat Sauce, Sausage, Cheeseburgers (especially with Blue Cheese), Osso Bucco